German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic project

8/9/2019 German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic project

1/30

1

PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

The Nonproliferation Review/Summer 2000

German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project

PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV1

Pavel Oleynikov has been a group leader at the Institute of Technical Physics of the Russian Federal Nuclear

Center in Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk-70), Russia. He can be reached by e-mail at .

The fact that after World War II the Soviet Union

took German scientists to work on new defense

projects in that country has been fairly well docu-

mented.2 However, the role of German scientists in the

advancement of the Soviet atomic weapons program is

controversial. In the United States in the 1950s, Russians

were portrayed as “retarded folk who depended mainly

on a few captured German scientists for their achieve-ments, if any.”3 Russians, for their part, vehemently deny

all claims of the German origins of the Soviet bomb and

wield in their defense the statement of Max Steenbeck

(a German theorist who pioneered supercritical centri-

fuges for uranium enrichment in the USSR) 4 that “all

talk that Germans have designed the bomb for the Sovi-

ets is nonsense.”5 The US intelligence community was

able to make its own judgment on the subject when it

debriefed German scientists and prisoners of war return-

ing from the USSR in the 1950s, but it did not make pub-

lic its evaluation.6 This article attempts to resolve the

controversy by drawing on both the stories later told by

these German scientists and the recently declassified

Soviet accounts of the atomic project. It seeks to deter-

mine the real extent to which German participation in

the atomic weapons program changed the balance of

nuclear power and influenced the course of the Cold War.

This article first addresses what the Soviets knew at

the end of World War II about the German bomb pro-

gram and then discusses their efforts to collect German

technology, scientists, and raw materials, particularly

uranium, after the war. Next, it reviews the Soviets’ use

of German uranium and scientists in particular labora-

tories working on different aspects of atomic weapons

development. It discusses the contributions and careersof several German scientists and their possible motiva-

tions for participating in the Soviet bomb program. The

importance of the Germans’ contributions was reflected

in the awards and other acknowledgments they

received from the Soviet government, including numer-

ous Stalin Prizes in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Their

contributions were particularly numerous in the area of

uranium enrichment, especially on the technology of

gaseous diffusion plants. After reviewing these devel-

opments, this article concludes with an evaluation of the

political and historical significance of the use of Ger-

man material and scientists. While the Soviets did not

need the Germans’ help to build an atomic weapon, their

contributions certainly accelerated the Soviets’ push to

become a nuclear weapon state.


2/30


PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

2

DID THE SOVIETS BELIEVE THE GERMANS

HAD AN ATOMIC BOMB?

In the latter stages of the war in Europe, the US Army

initiated efforts to investigate whether the advancing

Allied troops could be threatened by a German radio-

logical weapon.

7

However, the Soviets did not appear to share this concern. Whether because the Russians’ in-

telligence worked better than that of their British or

American counterparts,8 or an atomic bomb was not

believed feasible before the test in Alamogordo in July

1945, none of the published documents from the early

stage of the Soviet atomic project (1943-1945) speaks

of any such threat from Germany. However, there are

indirect hints of possible Soviet concern.

The US forces in Europe conducted an extensive en-

vironmental sampling program to determine the

location of possible atomic facilities. The recently de-

classified and published letters of Georgy Flerov to Igor

Kurchatov, scientific director of the Soviet atomic

project, show that the Russians also undertook such an

investigation. Flerov, a nuclear scientist, was in Ger-

many in May 1945 trying to find out whether the Ger-

mans had been able to make an atom bomb.

In a letter sent from Dresden circa May 21, 1945,

Flerov wrote in an ambiguous manner to protect secrecy

about his plans to use Geiger counters in the search:

Today or tomorrow we are going to fly in the

direction that you know. I am taking with me

Dubovsky’s instrument, but its sensitivity is, probably, too low. If we determine on site that

there are objects of interest for examination

and sensitivity of the instrument is the issue,

I’ll send you a cable.

You will have to assign Stoljarenko or

Davidenko (if he gets back by then) to this

work. Instruct them to assemble the instrument

in the lightweight option: powered from the

mains by 220 volts.... Along with the instru-

ment, let them pack the tables for finding the

appropriate periods.…9

Unlike the US airborne Geiger counters, the Soviet

counter was not portable because it was to be powered

from 220-volt mains. Flerov was going to search for ra-

dioactive isotopes with a short half-life (what he re-

fers to as “appropriate periods”). At the time, the only

way to determine the presence of an isotope was to take

consecutive measurements several days in a row and use

special reference tables to calculate what the measure-

ments revealed.

In another letter sent from Dresden on May 29, 1945,

Flerov gave more clues that suggest he was looking for

evidence on whether the Germans had conducted an

atomic test. In this letter, Flerov discusses his desire tointerview certain individuals being repatriated to the

Soviet Union from Soviet-occupied Germany:

...the repatriation has begun. So far there are

10-15 thousand people a day crossing the de-

marcation line at three checkpoints. Later this

number will rise to 50 thousand, until all

former Soviet citizens (1-2 million) will be

moved away from here. We have visited some

of the checkpoints, talked to former prisoners

of war. Unfortunately, people from various

locations are mixed in the most peculiar way.

… Nevertheless, there should be organized sys-

tematic filtration of all arriving people based

on their location: in such and such area, in such

and such year, particularly because the respec-

tive [Soviet intelligence] agencies are con-

ducting similar filtration in order to determine

whom to send to what camp. [ Here Flerov

made a footnote: In each camp we shall have

1-2 people focusing exclusively on debriefing

people brought from a specific location. After

the first superficial questioning, the only

people left will be those that we will speak to

personally.] After selection, people are kept for

several days until somebody from us arrives

to speak to them.

Possibly, you can send somebody from the

staff to help me. I think that as a result of such

search we will be able to find what we need—

a person who occasionally was there nearby,

as there were a lot of escapees wandering

through forests at the time. If successful, we

will get objective confirmation of the fact, tan-

tamount to as if we personally had been at thatsite. This must be done right here and right

now, because afterwards all people crossing

the border are dispersed through camps in Ger-

many and then are transferred to the Soviet

Union, and then even such an enthusiast as

myself would question our ability to catch the

right people….


3/30

3

PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV


The second direction is connected to what I

wrote you in the previous letter. In order to

determine finally what was really tested there,

we shall of course look after artificial, not

natural radioactivity. Unfortunately, a lot of

time has passed since, but I think that with [our

instruments] we will be able to attain the re-quired sensitivity.1 0

Obviously Flerov was not trying to find confirmation

of reactor criticality because such an event does not cre-

ate visual effects that could be observed by people in a

forest. Therefore, Flerov must have thought that escap-

ees could have witnessed something resembling an

atomic bomb test, accompanied by a bang and a flash of

light.

No documents have come to light that describe the

results of Flerov’s findings. What is known is that V.A.

Stoljarenko (who was mentioned in the May 21 letter)

indeed traveled to Germany, together with M.I. Pevzner

and A.K. Krasin, some time after Flerov, probably to do

the Geiger counter survey. Thus, the puzzle of whether

Soviet physicists believed the Germans had developed

an atomic bomb remains unsolved. However, it is clear

that both the Soviets and Americans eagerly sought in-

formation from German scientists and their laboratory

equipment.

RUSSIAN “ALSOS”

In 1944, alarmed by the uncertainty regarding Ger-

man atomic developments, several agencies in the US

government established a specialized group—the

ALSOS11 mission—charged with finding and investi-

gating atomic scientists and laboratories in the territo-

ries yet to be occupied by US forces.12 A year later, the

Soviets initiated a similar effort to search out and recover

valuable installations, equipment, and scientists in Ger-

many associated with atomic physics. The Soviet efforts

were conducted on at least as large a scale as ALSOS;

hence the use of the American title to refer to the Soviet

effort, for which I have not been able to ascertain theRussian code name, if one existed.

The Russian ALSOS group borrowed a lot in its op-

erations from “trophy brigades” established in the So-

viet army. These looting teams were formed in January

1945 when the Soviet army finally broke the German

defenses and opened the way to Germany. During their

advance, Soviet troops encountered almost no Germans

east of Stettin: most of the inhabitants had fled, leaving

behind virtually all their possessions. In order to collect

all the abandoned wealth, the Soviets formed special tro-

phy brigades charged with requisitioning any property

of value to the Soviet Union.13

The Soviets said the official justification for the trophy brigades came from agreements reached at the Yalta

and Potsdam conferences in February and July 1945,

respectively. However, the Soviet government did not

generally base its actions on respect for international

agreements, and the memoirs of Nikolai Dollezhal1 4

suggest the decision to launch the brigades was made

even before these conferences took place. In May 1945,

Dollezhal was assigned the rank of colonel and sent to

Germany in order to “collect technical archives of en-

terprises of the chemical machine building industry.”1 5

His identification stated that he acted under a decree from

GOKO16 of January 31, 1945, No. 7431. The papers hereceived stated that Dollezhal should be “granted unob-

structed access for inspection of industrial sites.”17

While the trophy brigades were generally good at con-

fiscating livestock and grain from the Germans, their

treatment of elaborate pieces of machinery was too

rough, often resulting in damage to the equipment or loss

due to chaotic packaging. The Soviet leadership seemed

to totally neglect the intellectual value of the German

materials. According to Boris Chertok who, like

Dollezhal, was promoted to the rank of colonel and sent

to Germany in April 1945 to inspect missile navigationequipment:

We had received guidelines and instructions

that God knows who had come up with: dur-

ing inspections of German plants and labora-

tories we should not be sidetracked by

intellectual achievements, but first of all

should make a list and compile an inventory

of the types and quantities of machines, tech-

nological manufacturing equipment, and in-

strumentation. In terms of documentation and

specialists, the matter was up to us and initia-

tive was not punished.18

As described below, the Soviet atomic search groups

demonstrated a different pattern: while they engaged in

the removal of equipment, they also removed documen-

tation and scientists who were considered to be equal in

value to, or even more valuable than, machines. The dif-

ference in agendas resulted from the fact that the atomic

weapons program was managed and controlled by a spe-


4/30


PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

4

cialized organization that was created inside the ubiqui-

tous NKVD.19

Origin of the Atomic Search Teams

From a technological perspective, in 1945 the Soviet

atomic bomb project was still “in the cradle.” The firstkilogram of metallic uranium had been manufactured in

the fall of 1944, and the first cyclotron brought in pieces

from Leningrad and reassembled in Moscow. There was

a lot of intelligence on the US atomic bomb, but the in-

formation had yet to be tested.

At the outset of the Soviet project, the atomic scien-

tists had been left to work on their own, with only the

Soviet Academy of Sciences supervising them. However,

the NKVD became involved in the Soviet atomic project

at the same time that the uranium problem was first dis-

cussed in the USSR. One of the heads of the project was

Avraamy Pavlovich Zavenyagin, who was also the head

of the 9th Chief Directorate (Glavnoje Upravlenije— GU)

of the NKVD. This choice of directorate was not a coin-

cidence but a logical consequence of administrative func-

tions of the 9th GU. As early as 1939,2 0 the 9th

Directorate already was a part of a larger Chief Direc-

torate of Camps for Mining and Metallurgy Enterprises

(GULGMP).21 In 1940, when the need for uranium to

use in weapons development was first discussed in the

Soviet Union, the emphasis was on surveying new ura-

nium deposits and increasing production from existing

mines. Naturally, this task fell into the realm of GULGMP, and thus that organization became involved

in the uranium problem. Thus, in spring 1943, when the

first atomic laboratory22 was set up in Moscow (Labo-

ratory No. 2, later known as LIPAN, now the Kurchatov

Institute of Atomic Energy), its NKVD supervision was

also assigned to the 9th Chief Directorate.23

Understandably, NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria and the

head of the 9th Directorate, A.P. Zavenyagin,24 were

interested in exploiting what resources they could find

in occupied countries. The first indication of their in-

tentions to engage German scientists emerged in a de-cree of September 18, 1944, which established a

specialized task force within the 9th Directorate and

commissioned it to “support the work of German physi-

cists invited to the USSR.”25 At that time, there had been

only two German physicists working in the Soviet Union:

Fritz Lange, who specialized in centrifuge separation

first in Kharkov and then in Sverdlovsk in the labora-

tory of Isaak Kikoin, and F. Houtermanns, a theoretical

physicist. According to the NKVD’s plans, very soon

they would be accompanied by many more.

In December 1944, another decree transferred the

mining and processing of uranium from the Ministry of

Ferrous Metals to the NKVD. At the same time, to pro-

vide scientific support to operations with uranium, aMoscow-based Institute NII-9 (now known as Bochvar

All-Russia Institute of Inorganic Materials, or Bochvar

VNIINM) was created within the 9th Chief Directorate.26

The first director of NII-9 was Victor Shevchenko, who

also came from GULGMP. From 1943 until his appoint-

ment at NII-9, he had been the director of the Norilsk

nickel mining combine, a facility that was infamous for

the large number of convicts who had died during its

construction.2 7

The next reported milestone in the Soviet atomic

project occurred on March 23, 1945. On that day, dur-

ing a meeting in Stalin’s office, Beria suggested that

specialized teams “grope in Germany and search there

for novelties of German atomic technology and for its

creators.”28 The next day Beria instructed the head of

Laboratory No. 2, Academician Kurchatov, to “submit

suggestions on formation of several search teams” to be

sent to Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. The same

day Beria signed a secret directive putting his deputy

Zavenyagin in charge of the operation to locate and de-

port to the Soviet Union German scientists privy to the

German uranium project or who could be of use to the

similar Soviet project. The operational issues were as-signed to SMERSH military counterintelligence,29 while

two members of Laboratory No. 2—Lev Artsimovich

and Yuli Khariton30 —were to provide scientific guid-

ance to the operation.31

The Austrian Bridgehead

The majority of German physical research institutes

were situated in Berlin, and thus were inaccessible to

the search teams until April 25, 1945, when the defense

ring around Berlin was broken. However, the occupa-

tion of Austria and Vienna in particular, which had oc-curred prior to the occupation of Berlin, offered the first

opportunity to evaluate the state of the “uranium project”

in Germany. From past experiences, the Soviet authori-

ties knew that Austrian institutes practiced a high level

of science and could be involved in the uranium prob-

lem. They thought that the information from Austria

could potentially be instrumental in the planned search

activities in Germany. Until the fall of Berlin, Austrian


5/30

5

PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV


institutes would be the only real information that the

Soviet government would have on the German bomb

project.

Thus, as soon as Soviet troops were established in

Vienna, the NKVD leadership dispatched Vladimir

Shevchenko, director of NII-9, and Igor Golovin, a lead-ing scientist of Laboratory No. 2, to Austria. In their ac-

tivities, Golovin and Shevchenko were assisted by the

NKVD units in Vienna. As Kruglov32 stated, “In April

1945, V.B. Shevchenko and representative of Labora-

tory No. 2 I.N. Golovin were sent to recently liberated

by our troops Austria (Radium Institute) to find out the

feasibility of removing equipment and various chemi-

cal reagents.”

Golovin and Shevchenko stayed in Vienna from April

13 to May 10, 1945.33 During their stay, they conducted

debriefings34 of the scientists from the Radium Institute

of the Vienna Academy of Science and from the Sec-

ond Physical Institute of Vienna University, and pro-

vided Moscow with the first overview of organizations

involved in the uranium project. Golovin’s report to

Kurchatov was finally declassified and published in the

proceedings of the Kurchatov Institute in 1998.35 In the

report, Golovin identified the location of the three cy-

clotrons that were built in Germany during the war 36 and

named the companies potentially engaged in production

of metallic uranium: Auer Gesellschaft, I.G.

Farbenindustrie, Treibacher Chemische Werke A, and

Mauer A.G. Radium Chemische Industrie undLaboratorium. As both Golovin and Shevchenko would

discover later when they moved to Germany to assist

with the work there, their information was correct and

Auer Gesellschaft was indeed the main producer of me-

tallic uranium. In addition to documents, the group in

Austria retrieved nearly 340 kilograms (kg) of metallic

uranium.3 7

The achievements of the Vienna group would have

been remarkable if they had not been dwarfed by what

followed later in Berlin and its surroundings.

The Search for People and Equipment in Germany

Although Russian sources do not indicate Soviet lead-

ers’ expectations for the search mission, the scope of the

missions indicates that for some time scientists’ trips to

Germany became more important than the research

conducted in Russian laboratories. According to

Heinemann-Grueder,38 the total number of Soviet atomic

scientists who went to Germany was close to 40. Given

that the entire staff of the only atomic laboratory in the

USSR at the time—Laboratory No. 2 in Moscow—num-

bered less than 100, inspections of Germany must have

stopped almost any work in Moscow for approximately

two months.

Evidently, Red Army regiments entering Berlin re-

ceived instructions on the importance of scientific insti-

tutions and some scientists. On April 24, 1945, the head

of the chemical laboratory of the 1st Ukrainian Front sent

a dispatch describing his inspection of the Kaiser

Wilhelm Institute of Physics and noting the absence there

of the famous Otto Hahn.39 By the time the main search

group, headed by A.P. Zavenyagin, arrived in Berlin on

the evening of May 3, all scientific institutions of inter-

est were already guarded by Soviet forces. As Isaak

Kikoin40 recalled, “Obviously, the Army intelligence had

such an intuition.”41

In his memoirs,42 Manfred von Ardenne wrote that

for the sake of safety, his employees had posted on the

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute’s entrances signs in Russian43

announcing that this was a scientific institute. However,

the first contact with Soviet authorities occurred not due

to that sign, but owing to a colleague. On April 27, Pe-

ter Adolf Thiessen, director of the Institute of Physical

Chemistry and a friend of von Ardenne, arrived in a

Russian armored car together with a major of the Soviet

Army. The major had handed to von Ardenne a protec-

tive letter or “schutzbrief.”44 That major turned out to be a leading Soviet chemist.45

The main search group that arrived on May 3 included

Zavenyagin, V.A. Makhnjov46 (both had the rank of

colonel generals of the NKVD), Kikoin, Lev Artsimo-

vich, Yuli Khariton (dressed in NKVD colonel uni-

forms), and probably others.47 If any group had arrived

in Berlin ahead of this one, it must have included Georgy

N. Flerov: as mentioned above, Kurchatov Institute ar-

chives contain his letters to I.V. Kurchatov describing

his search in Germany.48 Nevertheless, I.K. Kikoin does

not recall any meetings with a vanguard group; his ini-tial inquiries were to army intelligence only.

Surprisingly, Kikoin does not recall any guidance for

the trip from Russian foreign intelligence sources:

On board the plane, when A.P. Zavenyagin for

the first time announced to the group its goal,

he approached I.K. Kikoin with a question

about what German institutes, in principle,


6/30


PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

6

could be involved in the solution of the prob-

lems of interest.49 Such a list was immediately

compiled. First on this list was the Kaiser

Wilhelm Institute of Physics, followed by Ber-

lin University, Berlin Technical School, and

others.50

Upon arrival in Berlin on May 3, the group occupied awhole building in Berlin-Friedrichschagen. The build-

ing had armed guards and was big enough to house not

only the team members, but also some of the German

scientists recovered by the group.51

The first place the group went the next day, May 4,

was to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics. Its most

recent director was Werner Heisenberg, the head of the

German nuclear weapons program. The institute was

empty: most of its equipment had been evacuated to

Hoechingen in southern Germany (where it was captured

by the US ALSOS team). Owing to some confusion,Ludwig Biweloga, the deputy director of the institute,

had never received the expected instructions to destroy

the archives and so all documents in the institute fell

intact into the hands of the Russian team. In its size and

importance, this find was equivalent to German docu-

ments that were captured in Strasbourg by the US

ALSOS team: it gave a complete description of the Ger-

man uranium project and the accomplishments of the

German team.52 However, the level of atomic physics

in the USSR by that time was, in at least some areas,

more advanced than the information given in the Ger-

man reports:

Among the captured materials were

Heisenberg’s calculations of the critical sizes

for a nuclear reactor. The corresponding for-

mula—the so-called “three arctangents for-

mula”—worked its way to Laboratory No.

3.[53] It was of little use to us: it was for fairly

simple geometry while we were able to do nu-

merically much more complex problems. Nev-

ertheless, A.D. Galanin tried to reproduce it,

and initially failed. Only several years later did

he manage to prove it.54

According to Kikoin, although there was not much to

take at the Institute of Physics, “some of the equipment

remaining in the Kaiser Institute we had dismantled and

sent to Moscow (electric switchboards, instruments).

Several very naïve installations for isotope separation

we also had sent to Moscow….”55

Despite Kikoin’s low opinion of the equipment found,

other sources state that it was good enough to be installed

in a new building at his laboratory in Moscow:

This building was completely refurbished

within several months. The works received the

best equipment, both indigenous and obtained

under lend-lease from the US. … The labora-tory rooms were outfitted with trophy equip-

ment from the German Kaiser [Wilhelm]

Institute selected by D.L. Simonenko—an em-

ployee of I.K. Kikoin.56

However thorough Russian Occupation Forces might

have been at the Institute of Physics, they left enough

traces for Sam Goudsmit, head of US ALSOS, to figure

out the scope of work at the institute when he arrived

there in late July after that sector of Berlin had been

turned over to the Americans:57

Our chief visit was, of course, to the nowempty Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics,

where the uranium research had started in

1939. It was one of the few buildings wholly

intact. …A US military officer at the site did

not understand our interest in this building.

“It’s all empty,” he said. “Everything, even

switches and wiring, has been removed by the

Russians. We found some junk which we

dumped in the backyard. The sub-basement

looks queer. It seems to have been a swimming

pool. Go around and take a look.”

We inspected the place thoroughly. The

backyard “junk” contained various pieces of

equipment for nuclear physics as well as

blocks of pressed uranium oxide. There were

also some notebooks indicating the type of

research that had been going on. The sub-base-

ment was the bomb proof bunker laboratory

of which the Germans were so proud. It looked

as if it had been excellently equipped. The

“swimming pool” was the pit in which the pile

had been constructed. Metal containers and

frames for the arrangement of the uraniumcubes were still standing near by.

The Russian search team’s next recorded accomplish-

ment was its visit to the laboratory of Manfred von

Ardenne in Berlin-Lichterfelds. Von Ardenne writes that

on May 10, 1945, he was visited by Col. General

Makhnjov accompanied by Kikoin, Artsimovich, Flerov,

and Migulin. The visitors praised the research conducted


7/30


8/30


PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

8

USSR Professors Hertz, Manfred von Ardenne, and

Thiessen. Another group of our scientists had engaged

Professor Riehl, prominent specialist in uranium metal-

lurgy, and other German scientists.”68

An Offer They Could Not Decline

While the Soviet official history maintains that all

German scientists went to the USSR willingly under

contract, the real story is somewhat different. There were

“volunteers,” but there were many others who went un-

der duress. Germany was full of rumors about atrocities

that Russian soldiers were committing against the civil-

ian population: rape, murder, plunders. Could Nikolaus

Riehl have slammed the door in the faces of Artsimovich

and Flerov when the two came to take him to Berlin in

May 1945? He probably could have, but he must also

have been aware of the consequences in the form of sol-

diers coming to arrest him, and all the trouble this couldcreate for him and his family.

The massive deportation that began at 4:15 a.m. on

October 21, 1946, left no place for freedom of choice.

Every house was identified by authorities in advance,

surrounded by soldiers, and then the owners were or-

dered to pack and proceed to a railway station where they

were to board a train to the Soviet Union.

In terms of motives among the “volunteers,” there

was a very clear divide between the ideologists of Ger-

man science such as Gustav Hertz and the average sci-

entists and engineers. According to David Holloway,

Gustav Hertz felt that he would be unable to compete

on a par with American physicists, and he did not want

to accept any charity.69 Thus, he thought that he would

be more appreciated and feel more comfortable in the

Soviet Union.

In the case of Manfred von Ardenne and Peter

Thiessen, they thought that their stay in Russia would

be very short, just long enough to assist in setting up

new research institutions near Moscow. They did not

mind cooperating with the Russians, but the 10-year “so-

journ” was certainly not something they could foresee.

For less well-to-do Germans, working for the Russians

was really a “flight from hunger.”70 This motive was

evident in the actions of the scientists who elected to

work for the USSR, and for the United States under

Project Paperclip. In fact, the scientists’ relatives made

comparisons, and often the United States came out be-

hind in this “food race.” As an example, the wife of one

scientist reprimanded him for agreeing to work for a

wage of $6 a day in the United States: “Do you think

your adventure would be a success even if you were per-

mitted to stay in the US under such sad conditions,

whereas in Germany you could be a manager of a plant?

Even with Russians, in fact even in Russia, it would be

better than living the way we do.”71

Many people believed Soviet promises of very short-

term employment (one or two years only)72 and did not

mind making a “business trip” to eke out a living.

Whether the Germans did not realize the inherent dan-

gers or did not mind facing them, the Soviet authorities

never had problems recruiting technical personnel. In

general, the scientific community did not show much

concern about moral issues. The issue of regular deliv-

eries of food parcels to relatives in Germany was always

of paramount importance for German groups in Russia.

“Unfortunately, scientists are very much like prosti-tutes,” remarked one German scientist who worked at

Sukhumi when he was young, when asked about the

motivations.7 3

THE URANIUM STORY

One of Germany’s most important contributions to

the Soviet bomb program was not scientific know-how,

but uranium. The uranium confiscated from Germany

greatly accelerated the pace of the Soviet atomic

project. Despite all its efforts, the Soviet Union was cata-

strophically short of uranium for its atomic project. Evenafter some intensification of mining and the establish-

ment of Mining Combine No. 6 (which reported to the

9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD), I.V. Kurchatov

reported that the total amount of uranium available to

Laboratory No. 2 by May 1945 was only seven tons of

uranium oxide.74 Heinemann-Grueder 75 has noted that

in the spring of 1943, the USSR had bought limited

amounts of uranium (10 kg of metallic uranium, and 300

kg of uranium oxide and nitrate) from the United States

under the Lend Lease arrangement. Approval of this

shipment of uranium to the USSR caused some contro-

versy for US General Leslie Groves in the form of a con-

gressional inquiry after the war, but it did not have a

major effect on the Russian program:

In January of that year [1943], the Lend Lease

Administration had received an order from a

Russian purchasing agent for over 450 pounds

of uranium compounds. Several US companies

offered to supply the Russians with this com-


9/30

9

PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV


modity, but uranium had been placed on the

War Production Board’s critical list. There-

fore, the Russian order was, at first, turned

down. Groves heard of these negotiations and

intervened to honor the Russian request. He

reasoned that to refuse would provide the Rus-

sians with inferential knowledge of the statusof the United States’ atomic program. More

important, Groves hoped that the uranium

shipment could be tracked to its destination,

thus identifying the location of the Russian

atomic research center.76

It was not a secret to the Russians that Germans had

large amounts of uranium, including some acquired from

the Belgian Congo. Unsatisfied with their “recruitment”

mission, Khariton and Kikoin decided to start their own

search for that uranium. Kikoin might have been more

content if he had been aware that the group operating inOranienburg had found, despite the heavy bombing of

the plant by American aviation, nearly 100 tons of fairly

pure uranium oxide with all technical specifications,

contractual information, and descriptions of technol-

ogy.77 But, evidently, Khariton and Kikoin had departed

on their search before they received this news (and this

ultimately worked to their benefit). The story of their

search was kept in the archives of the Institute of His-

tory of Science and Technology in Moscow and was

made public only during a conference on the “History

of the Soviet Atomic Project” (HISAP), held in 1996.78

Doing a random search through Berlin, Khariton and

Kikoin came to a plant in the district of Grunau. Before

the war, the plant had produced paint, but during the war,

it was charged with producing gas masks. By mere

chance, Kikoin talked to a young woman who worked

as a bookkeeper, and she directed him to a small build-

ing where some experimentation with uranium took

place. From inspecting the plant’s records, Khariton and

Kikoin learned that a company named “Rohes” had

shipped several hundred tons of uranium, but they could

not at first locate the shipment’s final destination.

Khariton and Kikoin continued to wander through

Germany and, in Potsdam, they learned the name of the

head of the Belgian office of Rohes. Through the Soviet

military counterintelligence system (SMERSH), Kikoin

requested that this person be arrested. Soon thereafter

the Rohes manager was brought in front of the physi-

cists. The manager admitted the existence of the uranium

and the orders of Rohes to transfer the metal, but he re-

fused to answer any questions that might reveal the ac-

tual location of the uranium. Kikoin returned the man-

ager to SMERSH and asked that group to interrogate

him. The next morning SMERSH representatives in-

formed Kikoin that the manager had confessed the lo-

cation: the uranium was stored in a town named

Neustadt. There were about 20 towns with that name inGermany; 10 of them were in the Soviet zone of occu-

pation.

After fruitless visits to the first nine towns, Kikoin and

Khariton arrived at the last one, Neustadt am Glewe. The

main target of their inspection was a leather tanning plant

(which was already sending its products to the new

owner—the USSR). Going through the plant’s ware-

house, the physicists saw nothing but barrels of lead used

to tan the hides. Discouraged, they went to talk to the

chief engineer of the plant. The engineer told Khariton

and Kikoin that the company Hoffman und Moltzen had placed some goods in the plant’s warehouse and these

goods were in the barrels next to the barrels of lead. Upon

examination these goods turned out to be the uranium!

This discovery led to more than 100 tons of uranium

oxide being sent to Moscow.79

Overall, the Soviet’s acquisition of uranium from

Germany may have been the most important factor that

accelerated (or made possible at all) the Soviet atomic

program. As Kurchatov described it in 1946:

In the middle of the last year, comrade Beria

had sent to Germany a special group of co-workers from Laboratory No. 2 and NKVD

headed by comrades Zavenyagin, Makhnjov,

and Kikoin to search for uranium and raw

materials containing uranium. As a result of

their extensive work, the group has found and

brought to the USSR 300 tons of uranium ox-

ide and other uranium compounds. That fact

has substantially changed the situation not only

regarding the uranium-graphite pile, but also

regarding all other uranium installations.8 0

This number, 300 tons of uranium oxide and its com-

pounds, agrees with the estimates of findings at

Oranienburg and Neustadt am Glewe.81

According to Khariton, Kurchatov believed that the

uranium found in Germany during May to June 1945

saved the Soviet atomic project one year.82 The uranium

load of the first research reactor “F-1” in the USSR was

46 tons; the first load of uranium in the plutonium pro-

duction reactor “A” built in the Urals in 1948 was 150


10/30


PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

10

tons. Thus, it would be safe to conclude that the uranium

seized in Germany prior to the fall of 1945 was enough

to run both reactors at the initial stage. Soviet reactors

continued to bear German “birthmarks” even after the

initial period: German materials dominated in their fuel.

It is clear that Russia benefited from German materials,

but it also benefited from the contributions of Germanscientists.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE GERMAN

SCIENTIFIC GROUPS IN RUSSIA

Scholars of atomic history observe two distinct stages

in the Soviet atomic project. The first one started in late

1942 when Kurchatov familiarized himself with more

than 200 intelligence reports on almost every aspect of

the US atomic bomb program and established Labora-

tory No. 2 of the Academy of Sciences on April 12, 1943.

The second started after the nuclear explosions atHiroshima and Nagasaki and was initiated by the decree

of August 20, 1945, creating the Special Committee and

the First Chief Directorate ( Pe rv oje Gl av noj e

Upravlenije— PGU).

When the first German groups arrived in the Soviet

Union, the atomic program was still in the first stage and

thus relatively dormant. During the summer of 1945, the

German groups spent their time on initial preparations

and recreation. When von Ardenne arrived on May 22,

1945, he was placed at the “Silver Forest” spa near Mos-

cow; his children and other employees arrived by train22 days later. Riehl’s group was placed at the so-called

dacha “Osyora,” which once had belonged to NKVD

chief Yagoda and was later used as a residence for

imprisoned Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus and his

officers captured after the German surrender at

Stalingrad. According to Riehl’s memoirs, their groups

were soon joined by Gustav Hertz, Leipzig nuclear physi-

cist Robert Doepel, and distinguished physical chemist

Max Vollmer.8 3 Several days after Riehl’s arrival,

Gustav Hertz, Manfred von Ardenne, Max Vollmer and

he, along with their wives, were invited by Russians to

attend a ballet performance in Bolshoi Theater.84 Based

on the number of foreign guests at the performance, this

event must have taken place on the eve or right after the

famous Victory Parade in Moscow that was held on June

24, 1945. The Soviets apparently felt there were no ur-

gent tasks for the Germans, and they could afford the

luxury of taking them to Moscow to show off to British

and American guests.

In the following weeks, the German groups slowly

started preparations for future work in the Soviet Union.

Von Ardenne reported a meeting at the end of June when

he was offered a choice of places for his future institute:

the Crimea, the Moscow region, or Georgia. 85 Von

Ardenne selected Georgia with its subtropical climate.

Rudenko reported a decision on June 24 to send Hertz’sgroup (and von Ardenne’s) to Georgia, but he did not

mention any freedom of choice.86

Riehl and his co-workers started to travel around the

country to select a place for the future uranium factory.

Riehl traveled through central Russia and the Volga re-

gion. His co-worker Gunther Wirths was sent even far-

ther afield to inspect a location near Krasnoyarsk in

Siberia.8 7

This summer’s tranquility abruptly ended with the

bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Stalin was furi-

ous and demanded quick actions:

Stalin was really enraged, that was the first

time during the war that he lost control of him-

self…. What he perceived was the collapse of

his dream of expansion of socialist revolution

throughout all Europe, the dream that had

seemed so real after the capitulation of Ger-

many and was now invalidated by the “care-

lessness” of our atomic scientists with

Kurchatov at the top.88

Soon after creation of the PGU and Special Commit-

tee,89 leaders of the German teams were invited to a high-ranking meeting of a newly established committee. Both

Riehl and von Ardenne recall it as the first meeting with

Beria. As Riehl described it, “Beria had invited Hertz,

Vollmer, von Ardenne and me to visit him in order to

become acquainted with us. Each was separately invited

into his office where perhaps 20 other individuals,

mainly scientists and a minister, were seated.”90 Riehl

did not find anything special about the meeting with

Beria except that it was his first encounter with Igor

Kurchatov.

Von Ardenne, however, described that meeting as awatershed in his work in Russia.91 In his recollections,

among the attendees were Kurchatov, Alikhanov,

Galperin, Kikoin, Artsimovich, and Col. Generals

Zavenyagin and Makhnjov.92 Beria told von Ardenne

that as the director of a new atomic institute, von

Ardenne must build an atomic bomb for the Soviet

Union. Von Ardenne realized that if he made the actual


11/30

11

PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV


bomb, he would never see his homeland again. Thus,

von Ardenne suggested to Beria that his institute should

work on uranium enrichment, while the Russians build

the actual bomb. After half an hour internal discussion,

the commission agreed to von Ardenne’s proposal and

suggested that he select and hire the people he needed

for the task.93

The meeting with Beria was indeed a watershed for

all the German groups. Soon after it, they departed to

their new locations where they would spend the next five

years. The most significant sites were Institutes “A” and

“G” near Sukhumi, NII-9 in Moscow, Laboratory “V”

in Obninsk, Plant 12 in Elektrostal, and Laboratory “B”

in Sungul.

Von Ardenne and Institute “A”

According to von Ardenne, in late August 1945, Hertz,

Vollmer, and he boarded the train that carried them south

to Sukhumi, where von Ardenne was to set up his new

institute. From the very beginning, von Ardenne asked

that Hertz be provided a separate location. Such a loca-

tion was found seven kilometers from Sukhumi—a sana-

torium named Agudzery where an independent Institute

“G” was founded for Hertz. Von Ardenne stayed in a

place called Sinop, also in a building of a former sana-

torium.

Von Ardenne’s group arrived at Sukhumi with ap-

proximately 20 co-workers, but by the late 1940s, there

were almost 300 Germans working at his institute (the

total staff size is unknown).94 Von Ardenne’s group was

the most active among the German groups in Russia in

engaging prisoners of war (POWs) in its work. For in-

stance, Gernot Zippe, who became the head of all cen-

trifuge experimental work in Steenbeck’s group at

Institute “A,” came from the Krasnogorsk camp (the

main camp for German POWs who had scientific de-

grees) near Moscow. After major programs in Institute

“A” had ended, however, most of the POWs were trans-

ferred back to camps where they received fairly rough

treatment.95

Soon after the initial unloading and settling, A.P.

Zavenyagin paid an inspection visit to Institutes “A” and

“G.” He saw German teams in disarray, as much of their

original equipment never arrived (it went instead to the

Kharkov Physical-Technical Institute), and confused

about their roles in the new institutes. To improve the

morale of the teams, Zavenyagin dispatched to Sukhumi

a group of prominent Soviet physicists: Abram Ioffe, Lev

Artsimovich, and Sergei Sobolev, who were full mem-

bers of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and Isaak

Kikoin, who was a corresponding member at the time.

Heinz Barwich got the impression that the visit was a

sign of goodwill and desire to cooperate with the Ger-

man groups.96

Soon the academicians were followed by Georgy

Flerov. The meeting with Flerov was the closest that

German teams came to the specifics of atomic bomb

design. Von Ardenne recalled that Flerov clearly was

looking for new ideas as he described the problem of

plutonium predetonation and the requirements for fis-

sile material purity and enrichment.97 Barwich, in turn,

remarked that von Ardenne used the seminar to com-

plain about the quality of the lab equipment.98

Serious scientific work began only at the end of 1945.

After the organizational period, the topics assigned to

Institute “A” (Sinop sanatorium) were:99

• electromagnetic separation of uranium isotopes

(leader—Manfred von Ardenne);

• techniques for manufacturing porous barriers

(leader—Peter Adolf Thiessen); and

• molecular techniques for separation of uranium iso-

topes (leader—Max Steenbeck).

Based on Heinz Barwich’s account, Thiessen must

have arrived at Sukhumi some time in November

1945.100 Thiessen’s son Klaus stated that Soviet repre-

sentatives promised his father they would create a newinstitute of physical chemistry near Moscow. However,

contrary to his expectations, they took him to Sukhumi

instead.101

Max Steenbeck probably arrived at Sukhumi at the

same time as Thiessen. Steenbeck had been a director

at Siemens works and in charge of the Volkssturm102

militia at his plant. After his arrest, he was put into a

concentration camp in Posnan. 10 3 After some time,

Steenbeck wrote a letter to NKVD headquarters explain-

ing his scientific background, and he was soon taken to

Moscow, presumably by Artsimovich.104 Barwich re-called that Steenbeck was recuperating at the dacha

“Opalicha” in November 1945, where he was receiving

a cream diet to make him fit again. In Sukhumi, Steen-

beck had double duty: he worked with Artsimovich on

electromagnetic methods and also led independent re-

search on new isotope separation techniques (using cen-

trifuges).


12/30


PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

12

Artsimovich was a staff member of the Kurchatov

Institute in Moscow. Demonstrating Steenbeck’s dual

role, the personnel records of that institute show that on

December 29, 1947, Max Wilhelm Steenbeck was ap-

pointed the head of sector 6 in scientific division “A,”

which was headed by Artsimovich. From April 16, 1949,

to February 1, 1950, Steenbeck was listed as the head of Sector 26 of the Thermal Control Instruments Depart-

ment—OPTK. The OPTK department was headed by

Isaak Kikoin, the leader of the Russian uranium enrich-

ment programs, and this transfer meant that during the

late 1940s, Steenbeck’s work on centrifuges was a higher

pr iori ty than any other ac tivi ty .10 5 At its largest,

Steenbeck’s group included from 60 to 100 people, both

Germans and Russians.

Gernot Zippe, who was put in charge of experiments

in Steenbeck’s group, arrived at Sukhumi in the sum-

mer of 1946 after his liberation from the Krasnogorsk camp. Zippe had a scientific degree from the Radium

Institute in Vienna, thus his selection was natural. At the

end of the war, Zippe was conscripted, took part in ra-

dar and airplane research, then was captured and put into

a camp next to Stalingrad. Later he was transferred to

Krasnogorsk.

Von Ardenne noted that his institute also had a radio-

biology laboratory that studied the effects of radioactivity

on different environments.106 The laboratory was prob-

ably headed by Wilhelm Menke, a biologist who had ac-

companied von Ardenne at the very beginning.107

Von Ardenne drove away some of his personnel. First

he demoted his deputy Dr. Stuedel in a conflict over what

material to use in an installation for electromagnetic

separation of isotopes: Stuedel insisted on glass, while

von Ardenne believed it must be metal. This happened

in the initial period when von Ardenne was busy with

organizational matters and had put Stuedel fully in

charge of technical matters. Later Dr. Stuedel worked

in Steenbeck’s group on fully magnetic suspension of a

centrifuge rotor.108 Another “loss” was Dr. Bernhard,

who went with von Ardenne to Leningrad and did notagree with von Ardenne regarding the reasons for their

failures there. Bernhard had to transfer to Hertz’s group

because von Ardenne accused him of “breaking the unity

of the German group.”109

In the late 1940s, when the major work on uranium

separation was completed, the number of staff at Insti-

tute “A” was reduced. In 1949, von Ardenne with a small

group of co-workers went for a year to the Elektrosila

plant in Leningrad to implement his ideas. The centri-

fuge research work was transferred to Leningrad in 1952.

In 1949, Thiessen’s group moved to Elekrostal to con-

tinue at Plant 12 their work on diffusion membranes.

Institute “A” later served as the foundation for the

Sukhumi Physical-Technical Institute.

Gustav Ludwig Hertz and Institute “G”

Gustav Hertz was probably the most eminent scien-

tist among all the Germans who went to work in the

Soviet Union. He received the Nobel Prize in physics in

1925 for his work with James Franck demonstrating the

quantized nature of atomic excitation potentials.110 In

1932, he conducted the first experiments into separation

of neon isotopes by the diffusion method. At the time of

his transfer to the Soviet Union, he was the head of Si-

emens Research Laboratory. According to Kikoin, heused Hertz as his model: in 1943, Kikoin went to

Sverdlovsk where he tried to repeat Hertz’s experiments

with a slightly different set-up.111

Hertz arrived at Sukhumi together with von Ardenne

and was given a separate institute—Institute “G” at

Agudzery. Soon after this institute was established, the

NKVD organized a trip to Berlin to hire new people for

Institute “G.” The trip occurred in November 1945.112

The physical chemist Max Vollmer originally was in-

cluded in Institute “G,” but he soon left for Moscow to

work on heavy water production at NII-9 (VNIINM).113To Hertz’s surprise, the equipment that had been taken

from his laboratory in Berlin never arrived in Sukhumi.

The Russians explained that Soviet institutes, like the

Kharkov Physical-Technical Institute, had a higher pri-

ority. Hertz became angry and threatened that the qual-

ity of research in his institute would correspond to the

equipment provided and thus would be the physics of

1900. The situation soon improved.

The topics assigned to Institute “G” were:114

• separation of isotopes by diffusion in a flow of inert

gas (leader—Gustav Hertz);•development of a condensation pump (leader—

Muellenpford); and

• development of a theory of stability and control of

a diffusion cascade (leader—Heinz Barwich).

By the end of 1945, Hertz and Barwich were given

one new team member—a former convict, theoretical

physicist Krutkov. Barwich and Krutkov then partici-


13/30

13

PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV


pated in the NKVD-announced competition for devel-

opment of a diffusion cascade control theory.

Hertz’s position was important enough to the Russians

that he could request needed information from Soviet

colleagues in other locations. For instance, D.L.

Simonenko (who after 1945 was working in Kikoin’sdepartment) recalled that:

at the request of director of Institute “G”

Gustav Hertz, the encrypted cable from PGU

ordered D.L. Simonenko to inform scientists

at Institute “G” on the research into diffusion

in the vapor counterflow environments. This

information was delivered in the format of a

seminar. In his turn, D.L. Simonenko was

shown the work of G. Hertz on the cascade of

molecular pumps, and the experimental instal-

lation of M. Steenbeck used to investigate the

issues of stability of a long thin-walled rotor.115

Despite von Ardenne’s attempts to avoid direct com-

petition with Hertz, in some subject areas, groups from

Institute “G” achieved the results that were expected

from and assigned to Institute “A.” For instance, Werner

Schuetze developed an operational mass-spectrometer

that was put into production and used at the gaseous dif-

fusion plant in Sverdlovsk-44. Another success was the

work of Reinhold Reichmann who, parallel to Peter

Thiessen, designed a technique for production of tubu-

lar ceramic filters. Reichmann died in 1948 and was

posthumously awarded the Stalin Prize. In 1949,Reichmann’s group was moved to the Moscow Com-

bine of Hard Alloys (MKTS) to continue its work on dif-

fusion membranes.

A member of Hertz team, Dr. Hans Gerhard Krueger,

came to Institute “G” as a POW; he was found in the

Krasnogorsk camp.116 Originally Krueger was a mem-

ber of Reichmann’s team where he worked on the pro-

duction aspects of “mouthpiece” tubular filters. In 1949,

Krueger moved to Laboratory “V” in Obninsk, where

he developed techniques for quantitative spectral analy-

sis of reactor materials like beryllium oxide, sodium, bo-ron, lead, and bismuth. In an exception to the usual

prohibition, Krueger was allowed to publish papers in

Soviet journals during his “stint” in Russia.

After 1950, Hertz moved to Moscow where, together

with Werner Schuetze, he started to work on analysis of

lithium and purification of tritium.

According to the recollections of a former security

escort at Agudzery, before Dr. Muellenpford arrived

there for a final cooling-off period, he was the chief of a

design bureau in Leningrad.117 Evidently, this meant that

the work of Muellenpford at Institute “G” was success-

ful, and at the end of an initial period in 1949, it was

considered important enough to be continued, probablyat the Elektrosila plant in Leningrad.

Max Vollmer in NII-9

Max Vollmer came from the Technical Institute in

Berlin-Scharlottenburg and spent eight years in the So-

viet Union. Originally assigned to Hertz’s Institute “G,”

together with Gustav Richter (a former employee of

Hertz in Siemens Research Laboratory), he moved to

NII-9 in Moscow to work on the design of an installa-

tion for production of heavy water. Vollmer worked with

Dr. Victor Bayerl, who earlier had been engaged in oildistillation, and Paul Heulandt, a pioneer Luftwaffe re-

search engineer. The original heavy water assignment

came in late January 1946. In March 1946, Vollmer’s

group was put under the direction of Alexander

Mikhailovich Rosen.

In 1946, Vollmer was given a design bureau in NII-9

created specially for the task of heavy water produc-

tion.118 Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) archives

have a record of Max Vollmer presenting his ideas to

the PGU Scientific Council on August 22, 1946.119

Vollmer’s group designed an installation for heavy

water extraction based on the counterflow of ammonia.

The installation was constructed at Norilsk. The design

work was completed in 1948, and Vollmer and his group

were transferred to Zinaida Yershova’s group, which

worked on plutonium extraction from fission products.

Being a physicist, Gustav Richter proposed the idea of

using mechanical separation techniques (centrifuges) for

extraction of plutonium. Another institute tested the idea,

but Richter was never told the results.

The heavy water installation appeared to be inefficient

and had no immediate application to atomic bomb pro-duction because a decision had already been made to use

reactors with graphite as the moderator rather than heavy

water. Moreover, the plutonium extraction work came

too late. Consequently, Vollmer’s group did not produce

any significant results, and he did not receive any awards.


14/30


PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

14

Laboratory “V” (Obninsk)

Heinz Pose from Dresden had actually participated in

the German uranium project. He accomplished the mea-

surement of a neutron multiplication coefficient in an

uranium-moderator system. Soviet officials somehow

found him in Germany, and he accepted their invitationto work in the USSR, arriving with his family in Febru-

ary 1946. His future laboratory’s location was close to

Malojaroslavets, a small city in the Moscow region,

which prior to 1945 had been used as a camp for Span-

ish children.120 The site was given the code-name “Malo-

jaroslavets-10.” After initial discussions, it probably

became clear that the future laboratory would be unable

to recruit the necessary personnel in Russia. On March

5, 1946, Pose together with NKVD General Kravchenko

and two other officers, returned to Germany to hire sci-

entists for his laboratory. He spent six months in Ger-

many procuring equipment and selecting new personnel.Pose signed contracts with his new employees that obli-

gated them to work for him for two years. 121

Records in Pose’s diary122 indicate that he procured

equipment from Siemens, AEG, Zeiss, Schott Jena, and

Mansfeld for his laboratory in Obninsk. Pose envisaged

a large and extensive structure for his laboratory. He

planned to have 16 laboratories in his institute. Origi-

nally the plans were to have the following eight labora-

tories and a nuclear chemistry laboratory:

1. Heinz Pose’s lab for nuclear processes;

2. Werner Czulius’s lab for uranium machines;3. Walter Herrmann’s lab for special issues of nuclear

disintegration;

4. Westmayer’s lab for systemic nuclear reactions;

5. Prof. Carl Friedrich Weiss’s lab to study natural and

artificial radioactivity;

6. Schmidt’s lab to study methodologies for nuclear

measurements;

7. Prof. Ernst Rexer’s lab for applied nuclear phys-

ics; and

8. Hans Juergen von Oertzen’s lab to study cyclotrons

and high voltage.123

In 1947, Alexander Leipunski, an Ukrainian acade-

mician and scientific liaison of the 9th Chief Director-

ate of the NKVD since 1946, was given a position in

Laboratory “V.” (Eventually Leipunski became the sci-

entific director of the Institute of Power and Power

Engineering [IPPE] that was founded on the basis of

Laboratory “V” in Obninsk.)

Records of the Reactor Section of the Scientific Coun-

cil of PGU from May 1947 identify the goals for Labo-

ratory “V”: “Assign to comrade A.I. Leipunski and

Laboratory ‘V,’ together with Laboratory No. 2, devel-

opment of reactors with beryllium as a moderator, and

submit their practical proposals on this subject in the first

half of 1948.”124

This large-scale work was performed mainly by Ger-

man scientists. It included research in the following ar-

eas:

• physical, mechanical, chemical, and nuclear-physi-

cal properties of beryllium and beryllium oxide;

• analysis of chemical contaminants and methods for

reducing their amount;

• calculations of the [neutron] multiplying systems

with a beryllium moderator;

• preparation and performance of experiments on the

transport of neutrons in beryllium environments; and• development of various instrumentation and tech-

niques needed in research.125

Later Heinz Pose’s Laboratory “V” was put in charge

of “development of a nuclear reactor with gas coolant,

500-MW[126] power, using enriched uranium as its fuel,

and beryllium oxide as the neutron moderator.” 12 7

Kruglov also reports that Laboratory “V” was engaged

in studies of radiation biology and separation of radio-

isotopes similar to Laboratory “B” in Sungul. 128

Until 1948, the site was open, and there were no re-

strictions on outside trips. But, in 1948, the site was sur-rounded by a fence, and thereafter members of the colony

could leave only with escorts.129 At this time, two sci-

entists in Pose’s group, Dr. Karl-Heinrich Riewe and Dr.

Renger, declared a “strike”; they apparently hoped that

the NKVD would find nothing else for them to do and

send them back to Germany. It is not clear whether their

protest was caused by the introduction of the fence or

the fact that the two-year contracts they had signed in

1946 had expired and they still were not allowed to re-

turn home. Their protest, however, had very grave con-

sequences. Riewe and Renger were imprisoned, andaccused of being the ring-leaders of a sabotage.130 Riewe

received a sentence of 25 years in labor camps and es-

sentially disappeared.13 1

In 1952, most of the Germans left Obninsk for

Sukhumi where they lived until their return to Germany

in 1955. Heinz Pose continued his employment at Labo-

ratory “V” until 1955, when he moved to the Labora-


15/30

15

PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV


tory of Nuclear Problems (now the Joint Institute of

Atomic Research) in Dubna. In 1959, Pose returned to

Eastern Germany.

Plant 12 (Elektrostal)

Nikolaus Riehl described132

how, after his arrival inthe Soviet Union, he and Zavenyagin spent some time

surveying different sites for the future uranium plant. The

news of the Hiroshima bombing sped up their search,

and the decision was made to place the uranium plant in

Elektrostal (near Noginsk, formerly Bogorodsk) using

the facilities of a former munitions plant that had been

decommissioned at the end of World War II. Ironically,

the Bogorodsk factory had been used by the Germans

as a munitions factory prior to World War I; in the 1930s,

the Germans built steel works at the same place.

All the equipment originally installed at the plant came

from Riehl’s home company, Auer Gesellschaft:

All that we had were the materials that we had

stripped from our company and other places

and brought to the Soviet Union. Even then,

much was missing as a result of having been

lost or damaged in transport. Missing for ex-

ample, was a large vacuum oven. I went to

Zavenyagin, the Atomic Minister mentioned

earlier, and wailed. He determined from a tele-

phone conversation that it had inadvertently

been shipped to Krasnoyarsk in mid-Siberia

by mistake. A cargo plane was sent, and weretrieved it two days later. On one occasion

Zavenyagin visited us in the tiny munitions

laboratory where we were first located. He

asked the staff of Russian workmen, who en-

circled him respectfully, from where the vari-

ous pieces of equipment had come. The

response was uniform. Each had been liber-

ated as war tribute from Germany. Just as this

exercise was finished, a rat suddenly ran by.

He said harshly, “That clearly is ours.”133

Riehl’s group in Elektrostal was relatively small, andonly two POWs later joined it. There were 14 German

“specialists” in Elektrostal, or, counting all dependents,

a total of 31 Germans in town.134 On one occasion, Riehl

tried to improve the living conditions of some of his

former colleagues from Berlin-Buch. For example, af-

ter Riehl had learned that radiochemist Hans Born and

chemist Karl Gunther Zimmer were in the Krasnogorsk

camp, he told Zavenyagin that he needed them. The So-

viet authorities brought them to Elektrostal, but there was

almost no work for them there. To everybody’s benefit,

Zimmer and Born left Elektrostal for Laboratory “B” in

Sungul in December 1947.135

Although some sources call it unprecedented,136 Riehl

routinely attended scientific councils of the First Chief Directorate, PGU. Riehl was a member of the “uranium

mining and production” section of the PGU council and

took part in such decisions as:

• the annual plan for NII-9 for 1949 (on February 22,

1946, i.e., three years in advance, as was typical in

the Soviet planned economy);

• conclusions about the technological scheme of Plant

12 (jointly with Academician V.N. Khlopin and

Gunther Wirths, on March 14, 1946); and

• briefings on the requirements for purity of chemi-

cals used at Plant 12 (also on March 14, 1946). 1 37

As there was no experience with uranium production

in the Soviet Union in 1945, Riehl and his group used a

technology they had used in Germany. Gunther Wirths

took the lead in wet-chemistry processes (i.e., extrac-

tion of uranium from the ore), while Dr. Ortmann was

in charge of melting and casting operations. There were

three important upgrades in the technology. The first

involved the replacement of the low-throughput fractio-

nal crystallization method with a superior ether technol-

ogy; this resulted in a substantial increase of the uranium

oxide available for the reduction operation and final cast-

ing. Riehl learned information about this technologyfrom a Russian translation of Henry D. Smyth’s Atomic

Energy for Military Purposes, published in the United

States in August 1945. Two members of Riehl’s team,

Gunther Wirths and Herbert Thieme, quickly worked out

the technology—“we can do anything Americans

can.”138 They procured all the equipment for the ether

pr oces s fr om the Hermsdor f ce ramic factor y in

Thuringia. The ether process was ready to run by June

1946.139

The second improvement involved changes in the re-

duction process used to make metallic uranium out of powdered uranium oxide. At the suggestion of a scien-

tist from NII-9,140 Riehl agreed to use uranium tetrafluo-

ride instead of uranium oxide. Because the scientist did

not describe the source of his information, Riehl believed

that the data were obtained by intelligence. There are,

however, dissenting opinions,141 which state that the first

experiments with uranium tetrafluoride were carried out

in the laboratory of the State Institute of Rare Metals


16/30


17/30

17

PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV


German contingent left the laboratory in 1953, it con-

tinued its operations at a much slower pace until it was

assimilated into a new nuclear weapons design institute

NII-1011 (now known as the Institute of Technical Phys-

ics). While the actual products of the lab’s radiobiology

research are unclear, Kruglov in his account of Minatom

history, described the accomplishments of the radio-chemistry group: they developed the first technology in

the USSR for the isolation of such fission by-products

as strontium-90, cesium-137, zirconium-65, and the tech-

nology to remove these isotopes from chemical com-

pounds.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE GERMAN

GROUPS

The indicators of “success” for intellectual work de-

pend on the type of society in question. In societies gov-

erned by meritocracy, scientific success is measured bythe number of publications, the number of citations to

those publications, and the awards a scientist receives

from peers. In an authoritarian society, accomplishments

are often measured by the level of administrative posi-

tion reached and the government awards received.

Due to security restrictions imposed on their work,

German scientists could hardly expect peer review of

their progress. Following traditional practices, they re-

quested permission (which was denied) to be published

in Soviet journals: the Kurchatov Institute archives con-

tain a Ministry of Interior (MVD) memorandum to Beriaasking if German physicists could publish their work

under pseudonyms.155 In such circumstances, the only

available measures for success are the government

awards received by the scientists.

The most prestigious award in the 1940s and 1950s

was the Stalin Prize (later renamed the “State Prize”). It

was conferred in three degrees and was associated with

a very large financial bonus: the first degree prize car-

ried with it 150,000 rubles, the second degree prize con-

ferred 100,000 rubles, and the third merited 50,000

rubles. The prize was given to honor a prominent tech-nological achievement. Frequently when a certain

technology was recognized, the financial bonus had to

be split among its several co-creators. With a few ex-

ceptions, Stalin Prizes were awarded after a prominent

event, such as a successful nuclear test in the case of the

atomic program. Thus, the shower of Stalin Prizes in

1949 (after the first atomic test) fell mostly on people

who participated in weapons design and plutonium pro-

duction (including uranium fuel), while the prizes for

1951 (after the second and third tests) included scien-

tists from the enriched uranium program (because the

third test used parts made of uranium-235).

The case of Gustav Hertz, Heinz Barwich, and their Russian colleague Prof. Krutkow exemplifies the pro-

cess. The three worked mostly on uranium diffusion

cascades control theory. In late 1951, after the success-

ful test of a uranium-containing bomb, their contribu-

tion (the control theory) was awarded a Stalin Prize of

the second degree. The 100,000 ruble bonus was split

among them as follows: Hertz and Barwich received

40,000 rubles each, while Krutkow received only 20,000

rubles.156

The list of Stalin Prize recipients in the atomic pro-

gram was classified. The full list of recipients of the 1949

Stalin Prize was first published in the HISAP-96 pro-

ceedings.157 The following descriptions of the accom-

plishments of German scientists rely on the authoritarian

society model: they cover the cases where either Ger-

man scientists occupied leading positions in various

projects, or where their work received recognition in the

form of the Stalin Prize.

Reactor Design

In the late 1940s, the Soviets considered the develop-

ment of a beryllium-moderated reactor, the project as-

signed to Heinz Pose’s group in Obninsk, to be very

important. They hoped that the neutron multiplication

reaction that takes place in beryllium could substantially

improve the neutron balance in a reactor and even sup-

port an expanding chain reaction. However, the original

idea did not live up to expectations. In the course of re-

search at Laboratory “V,” it was discovered that the neu-

tron capture in beryllium matches the multiplication of

neutrons, meaning the net outcome is zero.158

After the initial goal of the atomic project—a success-

ful test in August 1949—was accomplished, the First

Chief Directorate (PGU) initiated a review of the feasibility of building nuclear power installations for large

ships, submarines, and civilian power production. Labo-

ratory “V” proposed a concept that included a beryllium

moderator, helium gas cooling, and a fuel made of en-

riched uranium. The Scientific Council of PGU, by its

decree of November 29, 1949, instructed Laboratory “B”

to continue development of helium-cooled reactors.15 9


18/30


PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

18

Because the majority of the German employees left

Obninsk in 1952, they were not able to see the results of

their original work. Only Heinz Pose continued his work

in Obninsk until 1955.

Electromagnetic Installations (Electronic

Microscope, Mass Spectrometer, Calutron)

Manfred von Ardenne, before he became involved in

atomic physics, was famous in Germany for his devel-

opment of vacuum tubes for radars and other electro-

magnetic devices. 16 0 At the time of Makhnjov’s and

Kikoin’s inspection on May 10, 1945, von Ardenne al-

ready had an electronic microscope in his laboratory.

Therefore, he was not surprised when in 1946 he was

asked to design a new, table-top electronic microscope.

He was able to quickly deliver the drawings. In January

1947, the Chief of the Site161 presented von Ardenne with

the State Prize (a purse full of money) for his micro-scope work.162

As mentioned above, sometimes Institute “G,” headed

by Gustav Hertz, was more successful than von Ardenne

in designing instruments. This was the case with the mass

spectrometer. Dr. Werner Schuetze from Institute “G”

designed a mass spectrometer that received unanimous

approval from the Government Commission163 and was

immediately installed at the future gaseous diffusion

plant at Sverdlovsk-44. In 1949, Schuetze was awarded

a Stalin Prize of the second class for his work.164

Ironically, it was Schuetze’s mass spectroscope that

continued to prove that von Ardenne’s efforts in elec-

tromagnetic separation (calutron) did not deliver the

expected results.165 While in 1950 von Ardenne was still

continuing his research into separation of isotopes at the

Elektrosila plant in Leningrad, the SU-20 installation

designed by Lev Artsimovich (commissioned in 1948)

was successfully enriching uranium. Ultimately, von

Ardenne managed to resolve the problems, which had

to do with the ion source and confinement of plasma.

At the end of his career in the Soviet Union, von

Ardenne received one more award—a Stalin Prize of the first class. He used this money to buy land for his

future private institute in East Germany.166 According

to the agreement that von Ardenne had reached with

the Soviet authorities soon after his arrival in the Soviet

Union, the equipment brought from his laboratory in

Berlin-Lichterfelds was not considered a reparation to

the USSR and he could take it back (which he success-

fully did in 1954).

Heavy Water Installations

The story of heavy water production in the USSR is

one of the few in the atomic project where agency ri-valry was especially visible and counterproductive. The

clash between the NKVD and the Ministry of Chemical

Industry is reflected even in Minatom’s official history.

According to Kruglov and Rosen, German involvement

in the heavy water projects began in 1946, when Max

Vollmer proposed a new method of heavy water produc-

tion and was transferred from Institute “G” to NII-9 in

Moscow. By then, the USSR already had a few facili-

ties doing the job. One, situated in Central Asia, in

Chirchik, Uzbekistan, produced heavy water by means

of electrolysis in cascades; the other, in Tula, used

hydrosulfates (e.g., H2S). The Chirchik facility had ex-isted prior to 1945 and was totally indigenous. The fa-

cility in Tula, with a high degree of certainty, can be

attributed to the Germans’ work. A 1955 US Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) report gave the following ac-

count:

Following the war the Soviets showed consid-

erable interest in German research in the pro-

duction of heavy water. The principal German

pilot plant was located in the Leuna Works at

Merseburg. In October 1945, under the aus-

pices of the MVD, a number of individuals

specializing in heavy water were assembled at

Leuna under the leadership of Dr. Herold. This

group drafted the preliminary plans of an H2S-

H2O exchange plant capable of producing five

tons of heavy water per year. Upon the comple-

tion of these plans, the Leuna group was evacu-

ated to the USSR on October 21, 1946. Herold

and his top men were housed in the small town

of Babushkin near Moscow. These people

worked at the Institute of Physical Chemistry

named after L.Ya. Karpov until mid-1948,

when they were sent to Rubezhnoye in theUkraine. It is believed that at this time [1955]

the group’s connection with the Soviet heavy

water project was terminated and that it was

detailed to do engineering work on the con-

struction of the Lisichansk Nitrogen Plant.

Whether or not the Soviets constructed the

H2S-H

2O exchange plant is unknown.167


19/30


20/30


PAVEL V. OLEYNIKOV

20

of Hard Alloys (MKTS) won the competition. In their

design, nickel powder was poured into a mold atop a

vibrating table. After some vibration to compact the

powder and level its surface, the tray was baked in an

oven until the powder was partially melted and formed

a ceramic-like porous plate. After the addition of some

strengthening elements, the plate was turned into amembrane ready for use. After tests, however, it was

found that nearly 10 percent of all pores in such a mem-

brane would let any molecule go through (i.e., were too

big to perform the separation function), and that the op-

erating pressure of such membranes was 20 to 30 milli-

meters (mm) of mercury (Hg) column, a feature that

would lead to large losses of electric power, a waste of

compressor power, and extremely high requirements on

the air-tightness of the machinery.

German groups in Institutes “A” and “G” joined the

competition some time in 1947 and started to work ondesigns for tubular membranes that were expected to be

more efficient. Peter Thiessen’s group in Institute “A”

focused on a lattice-type filter: a nickel lattice with

10,000 holes per square centimeter was covered by fine-

grain nickel carbonyl and baked in an oven. Afterwards,

the mesh was bent and welded into tubes. It was discov-

ered that Soviet industry at the time was unable to duct

nickel wire finely enough to make the required lattice.

For some time the necessary wire and the lattice were

ordered from Berlin.176 Although Peter Thiessen later

received a Stalin Prize for his work in the area of gas-

eous diffusion, it is unlikely that he personally invented

the membrane. Rudenko and Kruglov mention that a Dr.

Schtuze received a Stalin Prize in 1948 for design of a

diffusion membrane.177

Both German and Russian sources state that

Thiessen’s design had an unpredictable nature and was

more appropriate for a lab bench than mass production;

Zavenyagin derided his process as “artisanship.” 17 8

Nickel carbonyl powder was manually sprayed on flat

lattices and then these were pressed by rolls. Given the

huge surface area of diffusion membranes, manual spray-

ing was a real drawback. The need to do it manually dis-

appeared only in 1952 when a way to automate this

tedious process was found.179

The German group in Institute “G” was headed by a

former pharmacist, Reinhold Reichmann. He was work-

ing on a mouthpiece type of membrane that could be

extruded and would require no welding. Reichmann first

experimented with copper and silver, then with nickel.

Reichmann’s solution clearly had its roots in his previ-

ous occupation—he mixed nickel with dimethylgloxin

and then with a mild pain killer, clove pinks oil. 180 The

mixture was then extruded and baked. Reichmann died

soon after his discovery, and a Stalin Prize was awarded

to him posthumously in 1948.181

Both types of tubular filters developed by the German

teams, after tests in Laboratory No. 2, were approved

for use in second-generation diffusion machines.182 It

was decided to send Thiessen’s group to Plant No. 12 in

Elektrostal, and Reichmann’s group (headed then by

V.N. Yeremin and his wife) to the MKTS. Beginning in

1949, these two plants started to manufacture all filters

for diffusion machines.

The new filters could be used at pressures up to 50

mm of Hg column. This meant that—without any

changes in the gaseous diffusion plant’s design—its ca-

pacity could be increased by a factor of 2 or 2.5, pro-

vided its compressors could work at higher pressures.

Tubular filters were first used in the second-generation

diffusion machines that formed the basis of the second

diffusion plant, the D-3 plant at Sverdlovsk-44.183 In

1953, Zavenyagin decided that the production of diffu-

sion filters should be transferred to the Sverdlovsk-44

site in the Urals.184

Activating the Diffusion Plant

At the NKVD’s instruction, in late 1945 Hertz and his

colleagues in Institute “G” started develop

Documents

German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic project